The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

How to feed, train, and care for cartilage. Most health and fitness writers don't spend a lot of time on cartilage.

As tissues go, it's fairly isolated.

It doesn't contain blood vessels, so we can't deliver blood-borne nutrients to heal and grow it.

Cardilage has no nerve cells, so we can't feel what's going on.

Doctors usually consider it to be

functionally inert, a sort of passive lubricant for our joints. If it breaks down, you're out of luck,

they say. But that's what people used to think about bone, body fat, and other structural tissues,

that they are inert rather than metabolically active.

The truth is that bone is incredibly plastic, responding to activity and nutrition,

and that body fat is an endocrine organ in its own right, secreting hormones and shaping the way

our metabolism works. What about cartilage?

Can we do anything to improve its strength and function?

Absolutely, following our 13 suggestions to do just that.

Cartilage is made of water, collagen, and proteoglycins,

a protein polysaccharide bond that provides elasticity. Right there there we see one avenue for altering cartilage health, hydration.

Which brings us to number one.

Stay hydrated.

Go down to the pet store and look at the dehydrated tendons.

They're dry, stiff, and completely unmanageable.

Go down to the Asian market and check out the fresh beef tendons.

They're slippery, pliable, and still tough as nails.

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